Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

Every country has the government it deserves.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.